Man sentenced to 16 years for rape, sex abuse

This is the sort of crime that meth can lead to – more often than you think …

A northeast Salem man was sentenced Monday to more than 16 years in prison for giving a teenage girl drugs, taking pornographic images and raping her.
Shawn Clinton Dixon, 30, pleaded guilty to charges including third-degree rape, second-degree sexual abuse, delivery of methamphetamine to a minor and using a child in display of sexually explicit conduct.

Dixon walked into Marion County Circuit Judge Pamela Abernethy’s courtroom in a jail uniform and chains, nodding toward four women sitting in the front row. They declined to comment after the sentencing hearing.

No one representing the victim attended the sentencing.

“Mr. Dixon made a mistake,” Albino Vela, Dixon’s attorney, said in court. “He was doing so partly through immaturity and partly through use of drugs at the time that affected him.”

At the time of his arrest in February, police said Dixon gave the girl meth and showed her pornography to overcome her objections to sexual acts. Her parents called Marion County Sheriff’s Office and reported the crimes that occurred between August and February.

Abernethy asked Dixon to describe the conduct behind each charge he was pleading guilty to, in his own words. Dixon spoke softly and at times sounded choked up.

He said the girl, who was 14 at the time, asked for meth.

“She came over to my house and we smoked meth,” Dixon said. “She asked to smoke; she told me she’d smoked before.”

He also said he couldn’t remember filming or taking pictures of sexual acts involving the girl. When asked about the conduct behind the rape charges, Dixon blamed drug use.

“(The girl) had a crush on me,” Dixon told the judge. “I didn’t go after her. She caught me at a very bad time in my life, and I was intoxicated. She came on to me extremely strong.”

Abernethy scolded the man for minimizing his own conduct.

“You keep blaming her,” Abernethy said. “Tell it to me straight.”

Dixon admitted having sex with the girl on multiple occasions.

Abernethy handed down the sentence and told Dixon that she hoped he could get help for his substance-abuse problems.